several cases compulsory retirement is enforced at the age of sixty-five. In other cases voluntary retirement is not permitted before sixty-five, in one case not before seventy. One corporation fixes the age of voluntary retirement at sixty-two, another at fifty-five. In one pension scheme no age of retirement is specified, each case being dealt with by itself. In numerous instances, provisions have been made for retiring employees on account of incapacity at an age earlier than that fixed for regular retirement.

PERIOD OF SERVICE REQUIRED.

A certain minimum period of employment in the pensioning establishment is required in all cases as a condition of retirement on pension. The prescribed term varies from ten to thirty years. The latter minimum is required in only one case. The lower limits of twenty-five, twenty, fifteen, and ten years are selected in about the same number of schemes each.

AMOUNT OF PENSION GRANTED.

The amount of the pension is determined in various ways, on the general principle of allowing a certain percentage of the average wages for each year of employment. The usual arrangement is an allowance for each year of service equal to 1 per cent. of the average wages earned during the last ten years. For example, an employee who has served forty years, at an average wage of $50 a month during the last ten years, would receive a monthly pension amounting to forty times 1 per cent. of that sum, or $20. In one case the percentage of wages allowed is graduated from 1 to 2 per cent., according to the length of service. Another scheme provides for a monthly allowance equal to 14 per cent. for each year of service on the first hundred dollars, or any part thereof, of the highest average monthly pay of the employee during any year of his last ten consecutive years of service; and, in addition to this, an amount equal to one-half of 1 per cent. of any excess over $100 of the average monthly pay for the ten-year period. Another company pays pensions proportioned to the amounts of the employees' previous contributions to the Compulsory Relief Fund for sickness and accident insurance. Still another corporation grants pensions at the rate of 25 per cent. of the average pay of the employee for the ten years preceding retirement, and also permits the voluntary retirement of employees between the ages of sixty and sixty-four, who have served the company twenty years, on pensions equal to 50 per cent. of the average pay for the preceding ten years, this higher rate to continue to the time the pensioner is sixty-five years of age, and the rate thereafter to be 25 per cent. Other methods of reckoning the amount of the pension are the

following: 1 per cent. of the total amount paid to the employee in wages during his entire period of service; 20 to 40 per cent. of the average annual wages according to length of employment; one-half of the average wages for the last five years of employment; one-fiftieth of the salary for each year of service up to a maximum limit of of the salary; a flat sum of $10, $15, or $25 per month, according to the wages previously received. A maximum pension limit of $100 per month is fixed in one scheme. Minimum limits of $18 a month and lower are found in some cases.

PROVISION OF PENSION FUNDS.

The expenses of the pension system are in a great majority of cases borne entirely by the employer, no contributions by employees being required. The pensions are paid from a fund established by the company or from an annual appropriation, or by both methods. Some companies, however, require contributory payment by the employees. One system, for example, provides for a contribution by the employee to the amount of 2 per cent. of his wages and the payment of an equal amount by the company. Another fixes the employee's contribution at 3 per cent. per month, supplemented by an equal amount from the company....

It is impossible to state the number of employees provided for under the pension systems, or the amount of expenditure for pensions. Returns gathered by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 1906, from fourteen railway companies operating pension systems, show that the aggregate expenditures from their pension funds had amounted to $3,999,886.07.... The industrial corporations that have established pension systems are, in the majority of cases, employers of labor upon a very large scale. Indeed, the establishment of insurance and pension systems seems to be one of the usual features of the policy of the large corporations. The number of industrial workers who are now provided for by these pension plans must represent a very considerable proportion of the entire working class.

As these pension plans have been in operation only a few years, it is, of course, too early to draw conclusions regarding the degree of success attained. It is significant, however, that many corporations have increased their expenditure for pensions, while none, so far as can be learned, has abandoned a pension system once tried or reduced the expenditure for this purpose. What has been done thus far appears to represent a beginning in a movement that promises to do much toward solving, at least in part, the problem of industrial superannuation. It is

a fact of striking interest that, at a time when European governments are instituting systems of state insurance and pensions, maintained wholly or partly by general taxation, the American railroad and industrial corporations are attempting to solve this problem on their own initiative, through private systems supported by the revenues of the pensioning company.

The Commission intends to issue another special report, dealing with the question of pensions for municipal employees. This will embody the results of inquiries instituted by the Commission into the pension systems of all the larger cities in the United States. The problem of pensions confronting the municipality is essentially the same as that with which the large corporations have had to deal. The same reasons that have induced the latter to make special provision for the retirement of aged workers hold good in the case of the municipality. To continue men in the municipal service after they have outlived their usefulness in the positions that they hold means waste of the taxpayers' money and demoralization of the working force. On the other hand, to discharge outright aged workers who have been in the employ of the city for a long period of years is manifestly a harsh course, which the city as an employer of labor cannot afford to sanction by its example. The waste of the present practice of retaining aged employees in the service at regular wages is shown by certain returns prepared by heads of Boston departments, at the request of Mayor George A. Hibbard. The returns show that the total number of employees over sixty-five years of age in various departments is 491. The amount of compensation paid to them is $419,888.45. The number over sixtyfive reported as inefficient is 296, and the compensation paid to this group is $200,194.35. Twenty-five per cent. of these employees have been in the service of the city over thirty years, only 5 per cent. less than five years. The percentage of inefficient employees over sixty-five years of age in some of the departments is strikingly large. In the Cleaning and Watering Division of the Street Department, for example, thirty-five men are employed, of whom all are reported inefficient. In

the Cemetery Department sixteen are employed, of whom all are reported inefficient. The Commission is obtaining similar returns relating to aged municipal employees from other cities in the country. This question of pensions for municipal employees is regarded by the Commission as the most urgent phase of the pension problem. Besides issuing a special report on the subject, the Commission will give it further extended consideration in its final report.

THE RELATION OF STATISTICS TO ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY.*

By S. N. D. NORTH.

The unavoidable absence of the distinguished President of the American Statistical Association imposes upon me the completion of a duty he has already in large part discharged. At the last annual meeting President Wright delivered the first presidential address to which the American Statistical Association has ever listened. His address was a review of the history and work of the Association,—a history that reaches back to 1839, a period of seventy years, thus making it one of the oldest of the scientific societies in the United States, and very much the oldest of the organizations now in simultaneous session in Atlantic City.

At that meeting there was an organized movement to bring this old and honorable organization out of the rut of mere existence and into the strenuous activities of to-day. The American Statistical Association has lapsed at times into a condition semi-moribund, taking little cognizance of the rapid advance in statistical science, and contributing in desultory and perfunctory fashion towards its development. It must, however, be credited with establishing a fine statistical library and a system of exchanges with foreign statistical offices and organizations. It has also established and maintained an official publication, and its quarterly publications have been the only organs through which our students of statistical problems have been able to reach a sympathetic audience. The publications have been among the most valuable periodical contributions to statistical science, taking rank with the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society of Great Britain and the publications of the

* Presidential address delivered at a joint meeting of the American Statistical Association and the American Sociological Society at Atlantic City, December 28, 1908.